So as the title states I don't currently have a name for my theater just kicking some names around right now, but in the end I don't even know if I want to name it. At any rate here is the start of my first dedicated theater construction thread. Weeeee... 
As I mentioned above this is my first attempt at a dedicated home theater build. I welcome all to come, watch, laugh, and even cry with me on my journy. Please don't be bashful and feel free to ask questions and post comments as well. Brief background, luckily for me I live in Florida which basically means no basement (like 95% of you lucky bumbs have) and instead I have a second floor media room. The room itself is a "finished" room meaning the builder who built my home put up walls and carpeted, and paint. So the good news is I don't have to frame, hang drywall, etc. the bad news is I don't have to frame, drywall, etc. I don't really feel like tearing down perfectly good walls if I don't have to. Downstairs below the room you can hear just about ever move since its directly over the kitchen and family room downstairs. I am hoping before all is said and done to cut back on the sound carrying downstairs quite significantly. I doubt I will be able to eliminate the sound carrying downstairs all together given the sound treatment I am going with is concentrated just on the floor. We shall see if I succeed in this goal or not. Well I suppose I will get further into details about goals and what all the tasks are that I have in mind later. In the mean time lets get to the good stuff.
I know what everyone is looking for pics. So lets start with the room layout.
The media room is 22'6" x 13'4"
The entrance pre-destruction. The french doors are solid core doors done by the builder.
The inside of the room pre-destruction. If you look close on the ceiling you can see the outlet for the projector. This was the only prewire I had the builder perform due to expense. You will also notice the interesting slope of the ceiling on the side
. This was caused by the ducting for the AC unit in the ceilng.
A shot of the floor just before I remove the carpet. The baseboards have all been removed and you can see the carpet has begun to be pulled up.
Well hopefully that wets your appetite. More to follow soon.
As I mentioned above this is my first attempt at a dedicated home theater build. I welcome all to come, watch, laugh, and even cry with me on my journy. Please don't be bashful and feel free to ask questions and post comments as well. Brief background, luckily for me I live in Florida which basically means no basement (like 95% of you lucky bumbs have) and instead I have a second floor media room. The room itself is a "finished" room meaning the builder who built my home put up walls and carpeted, and paint. So the good news is I don't have to frame, hang drywall, etc. the bad news is I don't have to frame, drywall, etc. I don't really feel like tearing down perfectly good walls if I don't have to. Downstairs below the room you can hear just about ever move since its directly over the kitchen and family room downstairs. I am hoping before all is said and done to cut back on the sound carrying downstairs quite significantly. I doubt I will be able to eliminate the sound carrying downstairs all together given the sound treatment I am going with is concentrated just on the floor. We shall see if I succeed in this goal or not. Well I suppose I will get further into details about goals and what all the tasks are that I have in mind later. In the mean time lets get to the good stuff.
I know what everyone is looking for pics. So lets start with the room layout.
The media room is 22'6" x 13'4"
The entrance pre-destruction. The french doors are solid core doors done by the builder.
The inside of the room pre-destruction. If you look close on the ceiling you can see the outlet for the projector. This was the only prewire I had the builder perform due to expense. You will also notice the interesting slope of the ceiling on the side
. This was caused by the ducting for the AC unit in the ceilng.A shot of the floor just before I remove the carpet. The baseboards have all been removed and you can see the carpet has begun to be pulled up.
Well hopefully that wets your appetite. More to follow soon.
. I do try to stay a step ahead with my plans though. So I solidify the plan for my next stage while working on implementing the plan for my current stage.
. Now that being said, the steps I am taking (and will be illustrating in the near future with pics) are this. I blew in insulation underneath the current subfloor (in between the floor of the room and the ceiling of the downstairs. Next I am in the process of adding 2 more layers of 1/2" OSB with GG (50% coverage thanks to TheGeek's recommendation) down on top of the current flooring. I currently have one layer down now and you can notice a difference in sound transmission already, as well as a difference in stiffness when walking on it. It just seems much more solid now when you walk. Is it silent downstairs when your walking on it? No not by a long shot, but it is much quieter. For comparison, we have a pot rack hanging from the ceiling of the kitchen (almost directly under the center of the theater) and when we had the original carpet / pad in there it would rattle when the kids were really jumping around in the room, when I removed the carpet and pad from the room, the rattle would happen when even heavy walking / stomping on the floor. Now with the insulation and 1 layer of OSB / GG there is no more rattle from light to moderate stomping on the floor. You can still hear the stomping (muffled now) but the pot rack isn't rattling. My guess is I would have to do some heavy jumping to get it to rattle now. Which is quite different from a 35lb 4 year old jumping and getting it to rattle which is how it was before. Of course we have 1 more layer of OSB and GG to go plus a new carpet and pad to further sound proof. Again not perfect but hopefully it will end up being acceptable.
). As for testing with a system up there. I haven't done so yet, although I probably should have before I got started just so I could compare. That would probably have been done by the intelligent person, but I like to fly by the seat of my pants, and I am a borderline idiot sometimes. Plus, I just don't feel like taking a receiver out, lugging it up stairs, taking my sub out and lugging it up stairs, etc. Testing, then putting everything back (read "I am lazy" at times also, just ask my wife). In the grand scheme of things the amount of work would probably be minimal compared to lugging the 24 sheets of OSB up the stairs.
. I just have the safety glasses and I got some of the newspaper crap in my eye, and it itched for like 2 days. Oh, one more word of advice, make sure to secure the hose to the blower with duct tape or something. The blower was in my garage where my faithful servant was feeding it the insulation, when he noticed a different sound coming from the blower. It all of the sudden got a little harder to see as dust began to fill the garage, and a few seconds later he realized that the hose had blown off the blower and he was blowing insulation into the garage itself and partially my utility room. Meanwhile upstairs there is nothing coming out of the hose I am holding, so I continually call out to him to go ahead and start the blower, thinking he hadn't started it yet. I am still finding that stuff all over my garage. The funny thing is I actually used duct tape to attach the hose before we started, just not enough of it I guess. My friend was laughing when I put it on there too like I was paranoid. When I went downstairs to find out what was going on, he had re-taped to the nth degree. Oh and he was covered in the dust.
